The room was furnished with three armchairs, two sofas and two desks. Atherton added a log to the wood burner and the two men took an armchair each, facing the fireplace.
‘How are you finding the workload?’ Atherton asked.
‘It’s fine,’ Palmer said. ‘In fact, I took on a new patient a week ago.’ Atherton didn’t comment, but Palmer added defensively, ‘He was in a bind — his analyst withdrew suddenly — a personal crisis.’
‘If you feel equal to the task . . .’
There were times recently when Palmer felt unequal to answering his damn phone — as Karl already knew — but Palmer didn’t feel like tackling the reasons behind it; not now, not yet. So, he changed the subject: ‘Dylan has been worrying me,’ he said.
‘He has been withdrawn, recently,’ Atherton observed.
‘He asked me for private sessions,’ Palmer said.
‘I take it you refused.’
Palmer nodded.
‘How did he react?’
‘He thinks I’m afraid of him.’
‘And?’
‘I think he’s afraid of himself.’
They sipped their brandy for a few moments, listening to the logs crackle and hiss in the grate. ‘Did Dylan ever tell you why he started keeping his notebooks?’ Palmer asked at length.
‘No,’ Atherton said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I think he uses them to keep him anchored to reality.’
‘Proof of experience?’ Atherton frowned, thinking. ‘You know we tested his memory?’
Palmer nodded. ‘I gather he’s close to eidetic.’
‘Hmm . . .’ Atherton rotated the brandy in his glass, supporting the goblet in his small neat hand, peering into the tawny liquid like a fortune teller into a crystal ball. ‘Puzzling, isn’t it? Why would a person who has almost perfect recall need to make a written record of the tiniest details of his day?’
‘Because he doesn’t trust what he sees,’ Palmer said. ‘Or because he feels that others will question his memory of the facts.’ He shrugged. ‘But this is mere speculation.’
‘Yes,’ Atherton said. ‘Even after all these months, Dylan remains an enigma.’ He paused for some moments. ‘Imagine how it would be if you have the ability to summon at will sights, sounds, feelings — entire conversations, including gestures and inflections. And yet to feel that your memory is faulty — that it can’t be trusted.’
Palmer worked his thumbnail at one of the raised diamonds in the cut glass, pinging it like an alarm bell. ‘That,’ he said quietly, ‘would be enough to drive you insane.’
CHAPTER 7
Well, this is nice.
The place is damp; it stinks of rot and rat-piss, and there’s not nearly enough candles. I should be disappointed, but I’m not.
I do love the thrill of the hunt, the — what do they call it? — the deferred gratification of letting them go home safe one night, only to snatch them out of their lives on another.
She’s blindfolded. Which, again, is not ideal. But I can work within the limitations, for now. She moves her head from side to side, trying to sense where I am. ‘What’s the worst?’ I ask.
She startles. Begins panting with terror.
‘Shh . . .’ I don’t want her to hyperventilate and pass out.
She gives a little squeak, clamps her mouth tight to stop the noise.
She’s a quick learner — I like that in a girl.
I’ve tethered her arms behind her. I tilt her head back with the palm of my hand. The pulse in her throat flutters, then picks up pace, hammering like a piston. Can a person truly die of fright? The idea excites me almost more than I can stand.
I lean close to her, whisper in her ear: ‘I want you to imagine your worst nightmare.’
She’s a good girl — she does as she’s told.
‘That’s what I’m going to do to you, little Emma.’
Tears seep from under the blindfold and trickle down to her neck. I wish I could see the fear in her eyes.
I want to see every nerve and muscle in her body vibrate with fear. She tries to swallow, but with the tether, and my hand flat against her forehead, her neck is stretched so tight all she can manage is a kind of spasm in her throat.
‘And when your worst nightmare has been outdone by a factor of a thousand, what will happen then?’
I feel a tiny movement of her head under my hand: she really doesn’t know.
‘Em-ma . . . I thought you were so bright.’ I pause, giving her time to think. ‘Then it will happen all over again. And again. And again.’ Now I can smell her fear.
She sobs. Her blouse is fluttering with the force of her heartbeat, hammering so hard, you’d think her heart would burst.
I touch the pulse in her neck with the tip of my tongue and she cries out.
This is going to be even more fun than I thought.
CHAPTER 8
Wednesday, 19 November, night
Cassie Rowan hugged herself, hopping from one foot to the other. The cold had seeped into her, numbing her face, stiffening her muscles and sinking into the very marrow of her bones. She had stopped shivering, which somewhere in the back of her mind she knew was not a good sign. For the first hour, she had felt like she was balancing on frozen golf balls, but for half an hour since, her feet had been painless, solid blocks of ice. The fog was so thick that she couldn’t even see the lights on the cathedral concourse, and the spotlights intended to highlight the towering sandstone edifice only created a slightly brighter patch in the milky swirl of freezing moisture. The city had gone to ground. Only an occasional taxi rattled past, parting the fog like a curtain and vanishing again in seconds. Sounds were deadened.
The problem with slow nights was they gave you too much time to think. Rowan had been fretting about her younger brother since she started her shift: he’d been unusually solicitous that morning. He wondered if she should take time off to allow her injuries to heal. And when he got home from school that evening, he’d helped with dinner, then washed up, without having to be told. Since when did Neil wash dishes without being asked?
‘God, Cassie, you are so naïve . . .’ she muttered. She heard the drone of a diesel engine and expected to see another taxi approaching, its ‘for hire’ sign a blur of orange light. But the vehicle decelerated fast, and a white van pulled in to the kerb.
The door slid open and Rowan stepped forward and peered inside.
‘Sorry, lads, I don’t do group rates,’ she said.
‘For God’s sake, stop arsing about and get yourself in here, girl — it’s bloody freezing.’
‘You think?’ Rowan said, climbing inside and hauling the door shut after her.
There were just three in the van: Kirkhof, Finch and the techie. It reeked of Chinese takeaways, flatulence, and the indefinable chemical odour of a chain smoker: everyone called Kirkhof ‘Hoff’, or — when he was well out of earshot — ‘Hoff the Koff’ — forty years of smoking thirty a day had taken its toll on his lungs.
‘Bloody hell, Cass, you wanna get a few more clothes on, this weather.’
Rowan was wearing gold shorts with thick tights to cover the grazes on her knees, a fluffy pink sweater that was cut way too low to be of any practical use, a tiny gold cross-body evening bag, just about big enough to take her warrant card, and the ratty fur stole that Finch had rescued the previous day. ‘I did think of wearing my duffle coat, but it just doesn’t work as an off-the-shoulder number,’ she said.